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- Reason: Miami Sheriff Hired a Private Law Firm To Pursue—and Profit From—Asset Forfeiture Cases
- D.Conn.: Pole camera on def’s house and curtilage didn’t show inside house, so it’s reasonable
- OH12: Officer’s violation of knock-and-announce statute justifies suppression
- Reason: Documents Reveal the Postal Service’s Broad Surveillance of Political Activists
- CA4: Not having child in a booster seat justified stop
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Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
also, firm website Top 90 Criminal Law Blogs 2026 -
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com
Search and Seizure (6th ed. 2025)
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-26,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 600,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 50,000 posts since 2003 (29,000 on WordPress as of 12/31/25) -
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Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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General (many free):
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Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources
FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf)
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Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Outline of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012)
ACLU on privacy
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Section 1983 Blog -
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't."
—Me -
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well."
–Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others) -
“I am still learning.”
—Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)). -
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud -
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848) -
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984). -
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence."
—Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961). -
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987). -
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today."
— Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting). -
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property."
—Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765) -
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment."
—United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) -
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). -
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987) -
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967) -
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
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“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989) -
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969) -
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp] -
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.”
– John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper -
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime."
—Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948) -
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
Website design by Wally Waller, Colorado Springs. 
Author Archives: Hall
OH8: Stop for flashing high beams was mistake of law and objectively reasonable under Heien
The state concedes that one flashing his high beams for one second twice 14 seconds apart at a vehicle in front of him for not moving is not a violation of the statute for unnecessarily driving on high beams. Nevertheless, … Continue reading
D.V.I.: “Premises” includes the curtilage
The premises for a search warrant includes the curtilage, and drugs found hidden outside the house on the curtilage just a few feet from the house were properly seized. United States v. Dowling, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34956 (D. V.I. … Continue reading
D.Ore.: Seizing house title records from house officers already had copies of wasn’t overbroad; it shows control
The search warrant was not overbroad because officers seized title records on the property that they already apparently had copies of. It shows control. United States v. Cramer, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34959 (D. Ore. Mar. 5, 2019). There is … Continue reading
D.Mont.: Federal telephonic SW not subject to suppression without bad faith
The stop, as told to defendant, was for a traffic violation, but there was reasonable suspicion for drug trafficking considering all that the officers knew. Therefore, using a drug dog was reasonable because a drug investigation was legally supported. Use … Continue reading
N.D.N.Y.: Even if def accused drug dealer’s alleged cover business was omitted from affidavit, there still was PC
The officers lack of complete detail to fully explain defendant’s version that he might have had a lawful explanation for what he was doing doesn’t rise to the high bar of a Franks violation. In addition, it’s not uncommon for … Continue reading
CA9: CSLI warrant was issued without PC, but it wasn’t so lacking that GFE should not apply
The government’s pre-Carpenter search warrant for CSLI was issued without probable cause, but it wasn’t so deficient that the good faith exception should not apply. United States v. Elmore, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 6507 (9th Cir. Mar. 4, 2019):
W.D.Mo.: Def had standing in a truck he was loaned
Defendant has standing in his daughter’s truck because he showed that she let him use it. The officer’s mistake of law concerning the expiration date of the vehicle’s license was reasonable. “Month of expiration” under Missouri law isn’t obvious. United … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Def had standing in his own work computer but not the company server
Defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his own work computer, but not on what was on the company server. Because the crimes under investigation were listed in the search warrant, the warrant wasn’t general. United States v. Mendlowitz, … Continue reading
TX9: Def abandoned trailer he was living in along with all its contents
Defendant and his family were living in a trailer they abandoned. After a broken water line inside, the trailer and contents were damaged, and they moved out, apparently never to return. When the owner found the trailer, there was mold … Continue reading
Washington Examiner: The NSA stopped collecting bulk phone data, and nothing bad happened
Washington Examiner: The NSA stopped collecting bulk phone data, and nothing bad happened by Dan King:
Law.com: What’s Next: Thinking About Privacy Post-Carpenter + Getting Ahead of Drone Law
Law.com: What’s Next: Thinking About Privacy Post-Carpenter + Getting Ahead of Drone Law by ALM Staff: We caught up with USC law professor Orin Kerr to talk about the pressures that digital technology places on the Fourth Amendment and where … Continue reading
S.D.N.Y.: Use of military weaponry (flash bang) in a residential neighborhood is LEO discretion under FTCA
The choice of law enforcement officers to use flash bang devices in a residential neighborhood at 4 a.m. is discretionary with the police and not unreasonable as a matter of law: “weighing of such risks against the necessity of using … Continue reading
GA: Lifetime GPS monitoring of SVPs after parole and the SO registry unreasonable under 4A
Lifetime GPS monitoring of a sexually violent predator was a Fourth Amendment violation that does not satisfy the special needs doctrine and is unreasonable. Despite the diminished expectation of privacy of a person on post-conviction supervision, this is just too … Continue reading
MO: “All data” SW for cell phone was particular where crimes under investigation also listed in SW
No Missouri case deals with the question of particularity in a cell phone search. One group finds “all data” warrants not particular. Others hold such warrants valid if the crime under investigation is also mentioned. Here it was mentioned to … Continue reading
CA2: Even if SW was unlawful, def’s statement was attenuated
Even if the search warrant was unlawful for failure to specify the apartment to be searched, defendant’s statement was an intervening independent act of free will in disclosing the location of a CD of child pornography. The exclusionary rule would … Continue reading
Biometric Update: Constitutional rights group recommends laws limiting facial biometrics use by U.S. law enforcement
Biometric Update: Constitutional rights group recommends laws limiting facial biometrics use by U.S. law enforcement by Chris Burt:
D.Mass.: Realtime CSLI on exigency was reasonable under Carpenter
Warrantless realtime CSLI for exigency did not violate Carpenter. Indeed, exigencies are contemplated by Carpenter. [Aside from the fact Carpenter came after all this happened.] Defendant also consented to other seizures. United States v. Saemisch, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32706 … Continue reading
D.N.J.: Suggestion def look in console for insurance papers revealing a gun in plain view wasn’t a search
During defendant’s stop, he couldn’t find his insurance papers. Defendant rummaged through papers here and there. The officer suggested defendant look in the center console again, and this time the officer saw a gun. The suggestion he look in the … Continue reading
N.D.Ohio: PC shown: “the Court is concerned with what the Affidavit actually contains, not what a critic thinks it should contain”
On the totality of circumstances, the information from the anonymous CI was adequately cooroborated to give probable cause. “Further, Defendant criticizes the Search Warrant for what it lacks — no mention of others residing at Property and no detail about … Continue reading